Here’s a short one for you civil procedure mavens: in Pinellas County v. Baldwin, No. 2d11-2274 (Jan. 20, 2012), the District Court of Appeal (Second District) concluded that a property owner could bring an inverse condemnation action against the County of Pinellas in a court in the County of HIllsborough.
Under Florida procedure, when suing the government, the action must, generally speaking, be brought in the government’s home court. Thus, when suing a county, the proper venue for the lawsuit is in the trial courts of that county. But there are exceptions to that rule.
Here, Pinellas County owned a borrow pit physically located in Hillsborough County. Baldwin alleged that her land was permanently flooded and thus taken when the borrow pit overflowed as a result of construction. She instituted her inverse condemnation lawsuit against Pinellas County in the courts of Hillsborough County, and Pinellas moved to dismiss by asserting its “home venue privilege.” The trial court denied the motion and the County appealed.
The Court of Appeal concluded that an exception to the home venue rule with the ominous label “sword-wielder” applied, because the official act complained of was performed outside of the county’s home turf, and:
whether the state is the initial sword-wielder in the matter, and whether the plaintiff’s action is in the nature of a shield against the state’s thrust. If so, then the suit may be maintained in the county wherein the blow has been or is imminently about to be laid on.
Slip op. at 5 (quoting Dep’t of Revenue v. First Federal Savings & Loan Ass’n of Fort Meyers, 256 So.2d 524, 526 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1971)). Here, the County maintained its borrow pit in another jurisdiction and “[t]he unusual nature of Ms. Baldwin’s claim for inverse condemnation is its extraterritorial aspect.” Slip op. at 6. The court rejected the County’s argument that it was not exercising government powers outside of its home venue, because it didn’t matter in the end: the fact that the County was alleged to have taken the property without compensation was the act alleged to have triggered liability, and this qualified as the County’s initial “thrust.” The court thus suggested that the inverse condemnation claim was merely a shield.
We’re not sure about the intricacies of Florida procedure, but this seems like this case could have been resolved in much the same manner on the basis that the County could hardly be heard to complain about venue when the res alleged to have been taken is in another county and the action that was alleged to have caused the taking was the County’s borrow pit. But whatever the rationale, the result seems about right to us.